NEW DELHI: After 10 days of non-stop effort to pull out 5600 people, including 960 foreign nationals from Yemen, India formally called curtains down on the mammoth Operation Raahat, as air evacuations ended, embassy was shut down and minister of state for external affairs General V K Singh on his way back home.
"The evacuation operation from Yemen is over. General V.K.Singh is returning tonight. We are closing our Embassy there," external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj posted on her twitter account late Thursday night.
It marked an extraordinary 10 days, which began with the warship INS Sumitra picking up stranded Indians in Aden on March 31. Appropriately, INS Sumitra was also on a rescue mission today, transfering 46 Indians and 303 foreigners from Hodeidah port to the safety of Djibouti.
India had deployed three naval warships, two Air India 320s, one Air India 777 and four Indian Air Force C-17 Globemasters.
From Sana'a, the last three Air India sorties brought out 630 persons on Thursday. It meant that since getting permission to operate the flights, Air India has operated 18 special flights, which rescued 2900 persons.
The air evacuation was to end on Wednesday, but the sheer number of stranded Indians meant one more day of going through the process of negotiating the time and corridor for air operations with the Saudi arabians - the de-facto authority of Yemeni airspace.
"We were refused permission initially, then bombing necessitated plane to be on hold and we had to alter route," said minister of state Singh on twitter.
By sea, India's 3 naval ships, Sumitra, Tarkash and Mumbai evacuated 1670 Indians from Aden, Al Hodeidah and Al Mukalla ports.
Possibly on the last ship on Thursday, 350 persons we taken on board, out of which only 46 were Indians.
The majority - 272 were Bangladeshi nationals, with 15 from Yemen, 7 from United Kingdom and another six from Djibouti. Besides, there were only 1 each from Pakistan, Nepal and Philippines.
Overall, India had rescued 960 foreign nationals from 41 countries, exceeding the requests made from 27 countries.
As INS Sumitra sailed away from Hodeidah port at about 4.30 p.m., T Suresh Kumar, a workshop manager with a local shipping company was, however, not on board.
"I have lived here for 25 years. I don't feel that unsafe, mainly because Hodeidah has not yet been targetted as badly as Aden or Sana'a," said T Suresh Kumar, who is originally from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He had been the main pointperson for the Indian naval vessels for docking and operating from Hodeidah port.
"I will leave on the last boat, after all the Indians have left", Suresh Kumar told Express on phone from Hodeidah, adding, "I have heard another vessel should be arriving in 2-3 days".